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Monday, March 9, 2015

I’m suffering over an issue that has no solution except for time and its ability to heal all wounds.

Except I keep thinking: if only I could write about it, maybe I’d feel better.

Except my “issue” concerns a busted up friendship and if I write about it, I’d no doubt say something that shouldn’t be said which is the whole reason the bust up happened in the first place.

So writing is out.

Except I’m suffering.

So that’s why I told one good friend. I knew she wouldn’t talk and it would help me to vent.

And it did, for awhile.

Then it came back. The pain, the loss, the betrayal.

I don’t cope very well with this stuff. I’m not resilient.

I'm Not Resilient

I’m not resilient. I don’t bounce back from things. I just hurt at length. Sometimes for years.

And it’s not just emotional pain. It affects me physically. Because I have nowhere to put the pain, so it goes to my limbs and organs and hurts me in these places, too.

Hurts everywhere.

I have my writing and my career. I have my work on behalf of Israel and my people. I have my family. These things are good. They are my outlet.

But I’ve lost other outlets. Because when you lose a friend, you lose circles of friends. You lose activities associated with the friend, with those circles of friends.

And I can’t talk about the specifics here. Because I’m sure the whole thing happened because I wasn’t careful with speech.

Normally, you see, I stay at home and mind my own business. I don’t go anywhere that would give me occasion to gossip. So my mouth stays pretty clean on that score.

But occasionally, I break out of my shell and join something. That’s what I did last year.

I joined something. And that something led to certain friendships and the joining of other somethings.

And I made friends fairly easy and I exulted in those friendships.

It was a high to have people like me. Because, you see, for many years, I lived in a community high up on a mountaintop where I didn’t fit in.

I had no friends. So I stayed home and read and cared for my babies.

And so I’m used to having only myself for company. And I’m used to people thinking there’s something wrong with me which is why I never come out of my home and live inside my computer.

It’s why I have virtually no real friends at all.

But when I come out, I find that people actually like me and WANT to be my friend. And I am flattered and charmed and suddenly bubbly and someone else. Not that person who lives in a shell or inside my computer.

I come out of myself and I am someone else.

And people confide in me and I think I have a rare talent for listening. And I think they think I’m indispensable, that they need my listening ear. And they tell me things they really shouldn’t tell me and I shouldn’t hear and I am flattered and I never tell them to stop. And I think I’m in their inner circles. And sometimes.

Sometimes. I even say things to them about people. Things I shouldn’t say. Because everyone knows that friendships are two-way streets involving trust and if I want them to trust me, I will have to trust them.

So I won’t be careful to hold back the words I should never say. Words that are forbidden. Words that can hurt and maim.

And I am assured that I am loved. She tells me, “I know you hate being touched, but I have to hug you. I love you.”

And then an hour later. Two hours later. Three hours later. Does it matter? She tells someone everything I told her in confidence. Things I shouldn’t have said.

And they turn on me. It’s so fast I’m left stuttering. But, but, but on my tongue.

But.

But she’s all talk to the hand.

And here I am.

Suffering.

I want to blame her. But I find I must blame myself. I was not careful. I did not guard my tongue.

People got hurt. I take responsibility.

Mida kneged mida. Roughly. It means: you get punished in like measure.

But. But. But. And then I stopped my stuttering. I told her: if you do this thing, it cannot be walked back.

But. But she didn’t care and she walked.

She crossed all my red lines.

And still. I wish it were yesterday. Before it happened.

I wish she would listen. But it wouldn’t matter.

Because she crossed all my red lines.

And it can never be fixed.

And anyway, it’s all my fault.

So again I am without people. In my house, inside a computer. My computer. Without song or theater.

All that is left is my keyboard. And my struggle to keep my mouth clean. Which is not a struggle at all when one is alone for the long-term.

Sunday, November 2, 2014

I have a friend who is grieving for a child who succumbed to
cancer. I worry about her, but there is little I can do for her at the
practical level. When she reaches out on social media, the outpouring of love
and understanding is immense, but I wonder if it really helps.

I wonder too, about how my friend’s grief affects her family
dynamic. Does her husband prefer to turn inward, rather than air his feelings? Does
he feel as though he failed his biological purpose by not protecting his family
from harm? Does he show impatience with his wife’s need to talk about her
sadness and her longing for their child?

I know that grieving can be postponed, but not indefinitely.
And I wonder how much grieving is normal: how long my friend can grieve before
her spouse or some expert tells her time’s up. Stop the grieving now.

Normal Grief?

Some say there are four stages of grief, while others say
there are five. The experts talk about “normal grief” and something called “abnormal”
or “complicated” grief. This is grief that has staying power, or grief that is
delayed, for instance. Some people grieve too deeply, while others are denied
their feelings by society: told their feelings are unacceptable, to put a cork
in it.

My father died when I was 13. It was unexpected. It was over
in a split second. I wasn’t home when it happened and having said goodbye to
him at an airport within hours of his death, I feel I had decent closure. He
was smiling. He kissed me goodbye. We had no unresolved issues. My adolescence
hadn’t gotten to the awful stage yet (my mother was the unlucky sole beneficiary
of my teenage angst) so things were good.

I mostly felt shock when I heard the news. Shock and
emptiness. Yet not shock. Because I already knew. A friend had a premonition
and told me about it. He walked me home from school prior to the event and
said, “I have this feeling that when you come back from your trip, your father
won’t be here.”

At Falling Water a year or so before my father died. My parents, me, and my sister Devera.

And when I woke up with a tummy ache at 2 AM, the exact time
listed as his time of death, I was not surprised when a little while later, I
heard the phone ring and my aunt, with whom I was staying, say, “Oh my God.”

I told myself it must be my grandfather, my only remaining
grandparent, although he too, was well, and actually would not die for another
decade.

I was not surprised when my aunt stood up for the mourner’s
prayer at my friend’s Bat Mitzvah service, which was the reason I was in
Buffalo, NY, with my aunt and uncle, rather than at home in Pittsburgh. And I
was also not surprised when my aunt told me, as soon as the service was over,
that we would not be attending the luncheon, that my father was very ill and
that we must return to Pittsburgh at once.

I knew. I knew. I knew.

I cried a few quiet tears in the backseat of my uncle’s car.
And what had happened was confirmed when we crested Ferree St. and came down
the other side that led straight into the driveway of my childhood home on
Asbury Pl. The front door was open. The house was lit up. And I could see
people milling about inside.

I knew it was a shiva house, shiva meaning seven, for the
week of Jewish mourning. I came in and everyone said, “Shhhh. She’s here.”

My mother sat me down on one of our matching loveseats in
the living room and said, “Daddy passed away last night.”

I wanted to ask questions. Why? What had happened? But I
didn’t want to be a burden. Later I was told that my mother had said
repeatedly, “I don’t know how I’ll tell Barbara (the name by which I was called
then).”

I was encouraged to go up to my bedroom and rest. My uncle,
a pediatrician gave me pills. He said they would help me sleep and urged me to
take them. People came and went. I was numb. They all wanted so deeply to help
me not to feel.

So I didn’t.

The next day we stood in a receiving line at the funeral
home. Each person said the same thing to me. “I’m sorry,” they all said, one at
a time. Each time someone said it to me, tears fell from my eyes in huge wet
drops and I’d watch the blue fabric of my dress absorb them soundlessly as they
spread and then disappeared.

Mommy, Daddy, and Grandma Meyers

I don’t remember sadness or pain. I remember soundless tears
and fearing to be a burden. I remember numbness.

Then, six months later, I was sitting in class and started
to sob. Wracking sobs. Uncontrollable sobs. It HURT.

My teacher was smart enough to know what she was seeing:
grief, finally coming out, months later, unbidden, without any particular
trigger. It just happened. She found a quiet place for me to sit and asked my
best friend at that time, also named Barbara, to just sit by my side, which she
did, rubbing my back a bit, just being there, which was enough. I needed a
witness. I had finally opened the curtain on my grief at my father’s passing.

And every day for the rest of my years at home, I would awaken
at 5:30 AM to listen for my dad leaving the house for work. There should have
been the telltale sound of his hand gripping the cuff of a brownbag lunch as he
got ready to leave. But every morning, for years, only silence.

I ached inside, but was well-controlled. The pain subsided
sometimes and I’d forget until something would remind me.

40 years later I still light a candle on the anniversary of
his death. I post photos of him on Facebook and people commiserate. They say, “The
pain never really goes away.”

And I wonder if something is wrong with me, because I haven’t
felt sad about my father in a very long time. I feel that he can see me and
that he approves. I feel that I live my life in part for him, to make him proud
of me.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

h/t Barry Shaw via Real Jerusalem Streets. Shuja'iya in Gaza has been identified by the IDF and Shin Bet intelligence as an area rife with Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror hideouts. These terror groups store weapons in Shuja'iya, launch rockets from Shuja'iya, and dig tunnels to be used for terror attacks from underneath Shuja'iya.

The IDF warned the residents of Shuja'iya to leave for several days. Leaflets were dropped, thousands of phone calls were made, and text messages were sent, telling the residents to evacuate the area. While thousands of residents managed to get out, others were prevented from vacating the area by Hamas. Hamas prevented civilians from leaving the area because, like the residents themselves, Hamas knew that the IDF intended to target and eradicating several years worth of stockpiled weapons and the significant terror infrastructure they have built in this heavily populated urban neighborhood.

It is from Shuja'iya that hundreds of rockets have been launched into Israel.

Hamas asked for and received a humanitarian ceasefire, a lull in the fighting in Shuja'iya. Israel agreed to a humanitarian ceasefire of two hours, from 1:30-3:30 PM. During this time, Hamas brought in the foreign press corps to tell them about the "genocide" in Shuja'iya. Many civilians were killed and wounded because Hamas prevented them from leaving. The press reported the so-called "genocide" without mentioning that several dozen terrorists were the real targets and were among the many killed and wounded.

The humanitarian ceasefire gave the terrorists an opportunity to treat and evacuate the wounded and to move their weapons and explosives from the area, ahead of the serious fighting expected to take place in this neighborhood later today. It is believed that ambulances were used both to remove the wounded AND the weapons stockpile from Shuja'iya during the ceasefire period.

The ceasefire was still meant to be in effect when Gaza launched rockets into Israel, at 2:15 PM. These rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome system. IDF artillery responded shortly after, shooting several rounds of shells into Gaza.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Today is the day the chicken soup ran out. And still, my chest continues to grind out ugly pneumatic music, alternating between a rhythmic rattle to remind me at every turn that something is wrong, dreadfully wrong; and a wheeze that makes me look around to see who else is there in the room with me (answer: no one).

Though I long to stay in bed, I force myself up and out of my soft, warm, flannel cocoon. It is a kind of a test: am I well enough to work today—to cook and do housework?

This is the way I have lived my life in the sick zone since becoming a mom. If my hands and legs respond to basic commands, I’m well enough to be up. If not, not. You just can’t tell from a prone position.

So today, on the day that the soup ran out, I test my limits, moving with slow caution to see what I can do, what I will do, because will has everything to do with it. The phrase, “weak as a kitten,” comes to mind without much thought about what this actually means. Is a kitten weak? Do I care?

The soup has run out and I need soup, as any mom knows, and I’m a mom and surely know this. I need soup to get well—to get back the strength that will get me back into the workforce, where I need to be. Back at my desk at Kars for Kids and also at my other full time position: Resident Mom.

So working by rote, I gather the ingredients I need to get well: a can of chopped tomatoes and one of kidney beans, an onion, 6 cloves of garlic, and a red bell pepper. Squash and carrots and potatoes, too. I know what I need because I’ve made this soup so many times I can put it together in under an hour with no thought whatsoever.

(photo credit: Moshe Epstein)

(photo credit: Moshe Epstein)

(photo credit: Moshe Epstein)

(photo credit: Moshe Epstein)

It’s not art in the bowl. Not like my chicken soup which is practically speaking an all-day process. But it’s good, it’s healthy, and it warms me from the inside out.

I ladle out a bowlful and breathe in the steam. “This will make me well,” I think. And there is satisfaction in knowing that the power was in my own two hands, all along.

Method:

1. Chop in food processor or by hand, the garlic, onion, and red pepper. Sauté on medium heat in olive oil until onion is translucent.

2. Chop carrots and thinly slice potatoes and vegetable marrow either in food processor or by hand. Add to pot along with 3 liters of vegetable stock or 3-4 heaping soupspoons of soup powder and 3 liters boiling water), a handful of frozen chopped spinach balls (I like the type that is frozen in clumps), the canned tomatoes, and the crushed red pepper.

3. Bring to a boil, then turn heat down and cook, covered, for 30 minutes to 45 minutes or until potato slices are almost tender.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

I don’t so much choose what to write about as my subjects choose me. A lot of the time that means I end up writing about really grim stuff. Not today.

Today, a lovely feel-good story grabbed me by the arms and wouldn’t let go. It was a trailer for a movie called The Drop Box and the minute I watched it, I knew I had to write about it.

The Drop Box is the story of the Give Out Love Orphanage in Nangok; a rough, blue-collar neighborhood in Seoul, South Korea. Baby abandonment is common here and hundreds of unwanted infants are abandoned to their deaths each year. Pastor Lee Jong-rak thought to save at least some of them and to that end he set up a drop box where people might leave their unwanted babies.

"The Drop Box" - Documentary PROMO from Arbella Studios on Vimeo.
The pastor wasn’t sure anyone would follow through, but a slow steady stream of babies began to arrive, some with their umbilical cords still attached. The babies came with cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, and a host of other physical and mental deformities. Thirty-two babies have been dropped off since the drop box was set up in 2009, though “just” 21 are in residence today. Each baby gets an enormous amount of love from the Pastor, his wife, and the devoted volunteers who offer their time at the orphanage.

But not everyone is happy.

The child welfare people got wind of the orphanage after seeing a television special. They say there are too many people living in this four-bedroom residence. They say that conditions are sanitary. They say the anonymity of the drop box encourages child abandonment and robs the children of knowing their biological parents.

In an interview with the LA Times, an orphanage volunteer, Peter A. Dietrich said, “Rather than look at what he can bring, they focus on what he doesn’t have. The enormity of [Pastor Lee Jong-rak‘s] mission hits you between the eyes. I don’t know anyone who goes there for the first time and doesn’t tear up.”

I concur. There’s so much wrong with the world and here is one man, at least, who is trying to right some of those wrongs. It’s a little like bailing out a boat with a teaspoon. But it’s something.

It’s that same something that had me claw my way into a job at a nonprofit that provides mentoring services for children. I’ve earned my living by writing for the past decade, but until I took the job at Kars for Kids, I didn’t feel my writing made a difference. Now I do.

I love reading the success stories of the children we help. The letters come on a daily basis through interoffice mail, from grateful parents and from the children themselves. We give these children a way to steady themselves as they make their way through childhood and on into adulthood. We get them through with a lot of love.

And love is an international language, understood by all, whether in an orphanage in Seoul, or at a summer camp in Upstate New York. I’m proud to be on the same side as Lee Jong-rak: on the side of love, bailing out the world, one teaspoon at a time.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

The snow to end all snows is still on the ground here in
beautiful Efrat and I am feeling a little bit nutso. I would say I’m stir crazy
but the truth is, it’s not about being stuck in the house—it’s about not being
ALONE in the house. There are people all around me, all the time.

AIEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

I vant to be alone

It started Thursday. It began snowing and it didn’t stop. It
snowed and snowed and snowed some more. We ended up with over 3 feet of snow on
the ground and we were all home because when it snows in Israel, everything
shuts down.

It’s not that we’re wusses here in Israel. I grew up in
Pittsburgh and my husband grew up in Chicago. We know snow.

But Israel is a young country and snow is an unusual
occurrence so we’re just not prepared for the white stuff when it does come
down. Israelis don’t have snow shovels or ice picks to clear icy sidewalks. You
can’t buy rock salt here at your local hardware store. The city doesn’t have many
if any snow plows or firm snow contingency plans.

Panic Buying

When the weatherman predicts snow in Israel the supermarkets
overflow with people and the shelves empty out as panic buying ensues. So you’ve
got to do it too, or you’ll be without basic staples like bread and milk. Stuff
runs out.

The streets are narrower in Israel, so they become
especially hazardous in difficult weather conditions. The low-lying areas
flood. People don’t have snow tires or chains. We get especially heavy winds in
Israel that down trees and electric lines. At the same time, people flock to
Jerusalem from the warmer areas of the country to see the unusual weather
phenomenon so you end up with icy, jammed up roads.

Furthermore, houses in Israel aren’t well-insulated and most
people don’t have central heating. The cold seeps into your bones.

In short, it’s best to stay home and cuddle with the kids if
you have them until everything is back to what passes as normal. Which at this
time of year should be rain and not snow and freezing temperatures.

"The Look"

Now I like my alone time. I like my family, too, but not all
around me all the time, especially not when I’m trying to write as per my job
at Kars for Kids. And of course,
my desk is in the living room and I don’t have a way to cloister myself from
noise and distractions. The most I can do as my family members naturally forget
to be quiet around me is to give them “The Look.”

It helps. Until the next time. Usually five minutes later.

*sigh*

So when I realized my writing just wasn’t going to happen
today, I packed it in and looked for distractions on the ‘net. Since I was cooped
up in close quarters with too many people for too long a time, the distractions
I found had to suit my morbid mood. And oh lucky you, I’m good at sharing (don’t
thank me, I’m a giver, as my friend Dave
Bender always says).

A Movie About You

This website
lets you customize a movie to be about you by inputting the address of your
home from back when you were a kid growing up. At least that’s what it’s
supposed to do. You actually don’t see much of your childhood home—it’s more
expectation than wish fulfillment. But when you’re feeling nostalgic due to the
weather, it’s nice when you start to type in your old address and the search
engine spits it out for you. You feel acknowledged.

Here
is the movie it made for me. Note that Google Street View is not comprehensive
for Israeli streets, so I couldn’t make a movie for my kid with our (current)
address.

Next, I found this social experiment
pictorial. Here’s a quote from the page:

“After Candy lost someone she
loved, she went through a long period of grief and depression. With time she
felt gratitude for the time they had together and eventually she found clarity
in her life by contemplating death so much. But she struggled to maintain this
perspective. It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day and forget what
really matters to you. She wanted a daily reminder and she wanted to know
what was important to the people around her. So she painted the side of an
abandoned house in her neighborhood in New Orleans with chalkboard paint
and stenciled it with a grid of the sentence “Before I die I want to
_______.” Anyone walking by could pick up a piece of chalk, reflect on their
lives, and share their personal aspirations in public space.It was all an experiment and she
didn’t know what to expect. By the next day, the wall was completely
filled out and it kept growing: Before I die
I want to… sing for millions, hold her one more time, straddle the
International Date Line, see my daughter graduate, eat more
everything, abandon all insecurities, plant a tree, follow my childhood
dream, be completely myself… People’s responses
made her laugh out loud and tear up. They consoled her during hard times. She
understood her neighbors in new and enlightening ways, and the wall reminded
her that she’s not alone as she tries to make sense of her life.”Morbid enough fer ya?

A Fun Guy

Moving right along, here’s a fun
guy. He pours molten aluminum into ant hills. But hey, Kiddies, these are fire
ants that are pests, so it’s okay to torture them with the equivalent of a
manmade mini-Pompeii. Besides, it’s ART. It actually is really cool art.
You have to watch the whole thing to see why (alternatively, if you don’t like
to watch fire ants tortured you can just skip to the end of the clip).

Next up, I contemplated some really
neat architecture, which is a depressing thing to do when you’re living in
a moldy rental, so yeah. Really fit my moody blues. Last but not least, I found this totally useless
item. Actually, it may be useful for you, if you’re the type to fall asleep
on buses, trains, or planes. Unfortunately, I am too hypervigilant—I’d be afraid I’d miss my stop—to ever appreciate
the merits of this estimable sleep travel hat that
both cushions your head from bumps and shields your eyes from the light. It’s
called—you guessed it—the ostrich pillow. Come to think of it, maybe I
could use that ostrich pillow hat to feel more, um, alone. That is, if they’re all still home tomorrow. Until then,AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Yesterday it was gusty and cold and the rain came down in torrents. It was the kind of rain that would soak through your clothes clear to the bone in the dash from door to car. I didn’t want to go anywhere. I wanted to crawl beneath a quilt and think warm thoughts. But it was Wednesday, and Wednesday night means choir.

There was a chance of snow, so I called to see if our choir director was going to brave the roads. But I already knew what she’d say. Judy’s too tough to let a bit of wind or rain push her around. Besides, she said, they always say it’s going to snow and it never does.

I got home from choir at 10:15 PM and the first reports of snow came in half an hour later on our local Efrat e-list. Dov sniffed. “It’s not going to really snow until Thursday night.”

No School

But I woke up this morning and there was my youngest on the sofa. “No school?” I asked.

I looked out the window. Oh my. It was a world of white.

I love the way that happens. That surprise of seeing thick snow first thing in the morning, when the night before, there’d been none.

Usually, I’m the first one out there making snowballs and angels. A good snow is so rare in Efrat and I don’t like to waste it. I love to play in the snow. But today, I just wanted to stay in and be warm.

Work, Work, Work

Besides I had to work waiting for me. *sigh* Thursdays are all about that rush to fill my weekly quota of articles over at Kars for Kids. Still, a snow day is a snow day and that’s not to be taken lightly.

My firm belief: a snow day can be celebrated, even with work beckoning and even from inside the home, all snug and warm. I put up a pot of soup and brainstormed appropriate snow music, but the truth is, it was a no-brainer. I give you The Snow is Dancing, by Claude Debussy.

Son number six stumbled out of his room on hearing the music, cocked his head to listen, and then looked out the window at the white. He said, “By the way, Eema, that music is perfect for snow.”

It was kind of cheating because I’d taken the photo during last year’s storm. Still, it was a nice photo and several of my friends asked if they could share it. I was happy to share.

My snow photo got me thinking about snowflakes and how cool they look when you magnify them. I googled “snowflake photography” and found this amazing side show: macro photos of snowflakes by Alexey Kljatov.

In particular, the first photo in this series caught my eye. Doesn’t it look like Superman’s logo? One of my kids asked me why it looks like metal. Great photo, right?

Optical Illusions

Anyway, more about snowflakes: you know how everyone always says that no two snowflakes are alike? It’s only somewhat true. Snowflakes fall into specific classifications. I found this page of stereo snow images. The photos are supposed to be optical illusions. Alas, my eyes didn’t see anything special. Worked for my son, though. Did it work for you?

Last but not least, crafts. In particular, you guessed it, snowflakes. For Game of Thrones freaks. Here. (I even made a new Pinterest board for this one. I called it, “Crafts I’ll never do.”)

It’s a peaceful day. The house is filled with the good smells of baking and cooking, my kids are playing a game, and with this blog piece, I’ve filled my work quota for the week. Life is good.

Until the next time, stay warm, wherever you are, and if you brave the snow, throw a snowball for me.

About Me

I'm a pre-denominational Jewish
feminist genealogist foodie wordsmith musician, not necessarily in that
order. I'm also Myron Cope's niece and if you don't know who that is,
you're not from Pittsburgh.